Direc­tory support/mathtex

README

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December 6, 2014 Version 1.05
m a t h T e X R e a d m e F i l e
Copyright(c) 2007-2014, John Forkosh Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.
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by: John Forkosh
john@forkosh.com www.forkosh.com
This file is part of mathTeX, which is free software.
You may redistribute and/or modify it under the terms
of the GNU General Public License, version 3 or later,
as published by the Free Software Foundation. See
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
mathTeX is discussed and illustrated online by
the mathTeX manual at its homepage
http://www.forkosh.com/mathtex.html
Or you can follow the Installation instructions in
Section II below to immediately install mathTeX on
your own server.
I. INTRODUCTION
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MathTeX, licensed under the GPL, is a cgi program that lets you
easily embed LaTeX math in your own html pages, blogs, wikis, etc.
It parses a LaTeX math expression and immediately emits the
corresponding gif (or png) image, rather than the usual TeX dvi.
So just place an html <img> tag in your document wherever you want
to see the corresponding LaTeX expression. For example,
<img src="/cgi-bin/mathtex.cgi?f(x)=\int_{-\infty}^xe^{-t^2}dt"
alt="" border=0 align="middle">
immediately displays the corresponding gif image wherever you put
that <img> tag.
There's no inherent need to repeatedly write the cumbersome <img> tag
illustrated above. For example, if you're using phpBB3, just click
Postings from the Administrator Control Panel, and add the Custom BBCode
[tex]{TEXT}[/tex]
with the HTML replacement
<img src="/cgi-bin/mathtex.cgi?{TEXT}" align="middle">
Then users can just type
[tex] f(x)=\int_{-\infty}^xe^{-t^2}dt [/tex]
in their posts to see a gif image of the enclosed expression.
MathTeX uses the latex and dvipng programs, along with all necessary
fonts, etc, from your TeX distribution. If dvipng is not available,
you can compile mathTeX to use dvips from your TeX distribution, and
convert from the ImageMagick package, instead. Links to online sources
for all these dependencies are on http://www.forkosh.com/mathtex.html
and several are listed below.
II. INSTALLATION
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Note: The current release of mathTeX only runs under Unix-like
operating systems. To compile and install mathTeX on your own
Unix server...
+---
| Install mathTeX's dependencies and download mathTeX
+----------------------------------------------------
* First, make sure you have a recent LaTeX distribution
http://www.latex-project.org/ftp.html
installed on your server. Ask your ISP or sysadmin
if you have any installation problems or questions.
Or see http://www.forkosh.com/mimetex.html if you
can't install latex.
Besides latex, mathTeX uses dvipng, which recent
LaTeX distributions typically include. If you can't
install dvipng, see http://www.forkosh.com/mathtex.html
for instructions to use dvips and convert instead of dvipng.
* Then, download http://www.forkosh.dreamhost.com/mathtex.zip
and unzip mathtex.zip in any convenient working
directory. Your working directory should now contain
mathtex.zip your downloaded gnu zipped mathTeX distribution
mathtex/README this file (see mathtex.html for demo/tutorial)
mathtex/COPYING GPL license, under which you may use mathTeX
mathtex/mathtex.c mathTeX source program and all functions
mathtex/mathtex.html mathTeX users manual
+---
| Compile and Install mathTeX
+----------------------------
* To compile an executable that emits
default gif images
cc mathtex.c -DLATEX=\"$(which latex)\" \
-DDVIPNG=\"$(which dvipng)\" \
-o mathtex.cgi
For default png images, add the -DPNG switch. Additional
command-line switches that you may find useful are
discussed at http://www.forkosh.com/mathtex.html
* Finally,
mv mathtex.cgi to your server's cgi-bin/ directory,
chmod its permissions as necessary (typically 755),
making sure mathtex.cgi can rw files in cgi-bin/,
and you're all done.
+---
| Test installed image
+---------------------
* To quickly test your installed mathtex.cgi, type
a url into your browser's locator window something like
http://www.yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/mathtex.cgi?x^2+y^2
which should display the same image that you see at
http://www.forkosh.com/cgi-bin/mathtex.cgi?x^2+y^2
If you see the same image from your own domain link,
then you've completed a successful mathTeX installation.
* Optionally, to install a copy of the mathTeX manual
on your server,
mv mathtex.html to your server's htdocs/ directory.
And, if the relative path from htdocs to cgi-bin
isn't ../cgi-bin, then edit mathtex.html and change
the few dozen occurrences as necessary. Now,
http://www.yourdomain.com/mathtex.html
should display your own copy of the mathTeX manual.
Any problems with the above?
Read the more detailed instructions on mathTeX's homepage
http://www.forkosh.com/mathtex.html
III. REVISION HISTORY
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See http://www.forkosh.com/mathtexchangelog.html for a detailed
discussion of mathTeX revisions.
o 11 Oct 2007 -- mathTeX version 1.00 released.
o 12 Oct 2007 -- optional \usepackage[arg]{package} argument
now recognized correctly (initial release neglected to
handle optional [arg] following \usepackage).
o 12 Oct 2007 -- html &#nnn; now translated during preprocessing,
e.g., &#091 or &#091; becomes [ (left square bracket) before
it's submitted to latex.
o 12 Oct 2007 -- special mathTeX directives like \time
are now checked for proper command termination, i.e., non-alpha
character. (In particular, LaTeX \times had been incorrectly
interpreted as mathTeX \time followed by an s.)
o 12 Oct 2007 -- url "unescape" translation, i.e.,
%20-to-blank, etc, repeated (done twice) for
<form> input. (I'm not sure why this is necessary,
and can't reproduce the problem myself, but am acting
on seemingly reliable reports.)
o 20 Oct 2007 -- removed leading and trailing pairs of $$...$$'s
from input expressions, interpreting $...$ as \textstyle and
$$...$$ as \displaystyle (and $$$...$$$ as \parstyle).
Also removed leading and trailing \[...\], interpreting it
as \displaystyle. (Note: \displaystyle is mathTeX's default,
so $$...$$'s or \[...\] are unnecessary. But some people submit
expressions containing them, so they're now interpreted.)
o 16 Feb 2008 -- more robust test to display the correct
error message when a required dependency isn't installed.
(Occasionally, the "ran but failed" message was emitted
when a dependency was actually "not installed".)
o 16 Feb 2008 -- -DDENYREFERER=\"string\" or
-DDENYREFERER=\"string1,string2,etc\" compile switch added.
If compiled with it, mathTeX won't render images for
HTTP_REFERER's containing string (or string1 or string2, etc)
as a substring of their url's.
o 17 Feb 2008 -- updated (slightly) documentation
o 18 Feb 2008 -- mathTeX version 1.01 released.
o 05 Mar 2009 -- \environment directive added to display
all http environment variables.
o 06 Mar 2009 -- mathTeX version 1.02 released.
o 15 Nov 2011 -- mathTeX version 1.05 released.
o 26 Oct 2014 -- most recent change
IV. CONCLUDING REMARKS
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I hope you find mathTeX useful. If so, a contribution to your
country's TeX Users Group, or to the GNU project, is suggested,
especially if you're a company that's currently profitable.
========================= END-OF-FILE README ===========================

math­tex – A CGI pro­gram to use LaTeX to put math­e­mat­ics on the web

MathTeX is a CGI pro­gram, writ­ten in C, that uses LaTeX and ei­ther
dvipng or dvips/con­vert to emit GIF or PNG im­ages of LaTeX
math­e­mat­i­cal ex­pres­sions. Users can put math­e­mat­ics di­rectly in
html pages with an <img> tag of the form<img src="/cgi-bin/math­tex.cgi?f(x)=\int_{-\in­fty}^xe^{-t^2}dt">
(see the pack­age home page for a com­plete dis­cus­sion).

MathTeX is a suc­ces­sor of the au­thor's ear­lier
mimε-TeX; but mathTeX uses real LaTeX,
where as mimε-TeX uses its own built-in fonts, in­ter­preter and
ren­der­ing en­gine. Users who have LaTeX avail­able on their server
can ob­tain higher qual­ity im­ages and full LaTeX sup­port with
mathTeX. Users whose server doesn't of­fer LaTeX can con­tinue to
use mimε-TeX. The two pro­grams are
“plug-com­pat­i­ble”, us­ing the same <img> tag
“user in­ter­face”, so mi­gra­tion is triv­ial.

The pack­age home page car­ries ex­ten­sive doc­u­men­ta­tion of MathTeX.